LG Optimus Black to get ICS after all? It seems so!

LG, why do you insist on tormenting us? After the whole shenanigan with the Optimus 2X, which was scheduled to get the ICS bump in Q2, then in Q3, then never, then again in Q3, another mid-ranger from the company seems to have the same ever-changing fate.

The Optimus Black was released in May 2011 with 2.2 Froyo on board and, like the Optimus 2X, it got swiftly updated to Gingerbread in only a matter of months. When it came to Ice Cream Sandwich though, things got really tangled and complicated.

In fact, most Optimus Black adopters probably lost hope for ever seeing Android 4.0 on their 4-inchers months ago, as their was no official statements from LG’s PR department on the matter. LG Canada even dropped a bomb in July, tweeting that, just like the 2X, the Optimus Black “will not be receiving the ICS upgrade”.

(Un) surprisingly, the respective tweet now seems to be contradicted by a couple of pics published exclusively by techcovet.com. In the photos, you can clearly see retail boxes of the Optimus Black with “Android 4.0 ICS upgradable” stickers.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Someone could have pasted those stickers on the boxes to play games with us or the photos themselves could be fakes. It could be some desperate attempt from a retailer or carrier to get rid of some old Optimus Blacks. Then again, those might not be the cases after all.

The guys over at TechCovet are giving their word they saw the sealed boxes with the stickers under the seals with their own eyes. So the only scenario left to dispute the report’s credibility would be that of a cheating retailer. Possible, but not very likely, as far as we’re concerned.

The only other issue we have with the report is the location of the retail store where the boxes have been spotted. This hasn’t been revealed by TechCovet, but we can see English writings all around the boxes, so there aren’t that many likely possibilities.

So, without any additional (and unfounded) speculation, let’s say that an ICS upgrade for the LG Optimus Black now seems more likely than ever in at least one English-speaking country. We should probably get more on the topic soon, so keep in touch and in the meantime let’s make a quick headcount. How many of you are still waiting for an official Android 4.0 bump on an LG Optimus Black?

LG Optimus F3 picture apparently leaked, heading to Sprint soon

by Bogdan Bele, 1 day ago

An image of the LG Optimus F3 with Sprint branding has hit the web via famed leaker @evleaks. LG has announced two other devices part of the budget-friendly F devices, the Optimus F7 and F5,…

Comments

MasterMuffin

LG got more than HTC? Wow HTC ia doing bad! O.o
- alex
  
  Reviewers trying to save them.. All media bias.. In the real world HTC is doing nothing..
  - OMGgary
    
    Yes, I’ve noticed the way that tech websites have been trying to hype up HTC. Too much damage done by the company to its own image at this stage, something which isn’t being improved by the arrogant pretence of elitism in its most recent campaign. You don’t get back out of the gutter by donning a top hat, putting on a snooty accent and telling people you’re Lord Haughty.
    - quietly defective
      
      Very true, gsm arena went as far as calling the One button issues minor, just today.
  - amine ELouakil
    
    lol Media bias? Think again, HTC doesn’t have the ressources nor the money that Samsung have, Samsung sponsers tech websites and they don’t even hide it and you think that they are favoring HTC, that’s some nonsense right there.
    - simpleas
      
      Lol no money and the products got issues. .GL HTC.
      - amine ELouakil
        
        Nah they’ll be fine, what they need is to release a global butterfly J with a 5,3″ or more display a sort of fablet if you may say and a proper tablet before holidays season, if they can keep the momuntum without dellueting their new found brand they should be fine
  - urbanpitch
    
    Yeah, I still don’t see how a metal body makes it an ‘obvious choice’. If another phone has a big screen, does all the same things and is fast as well, how is a removable battery or SD card slot that you can access easily a bad thing? I thought people were bitching at apple for not having thing those features?
    And can we talk about senseui? I don’t know how its better than touchwiz (I’m not saying touchwiz is great either) but damn, HTC ruined the One with that ui.
    - Lil bit
      
      They both ruined the ui, thanx God for Xperia Z with its clean virgin ui. Sense and tw both reminds me of STDs, esp tw has a sickly bloat to it. Sense could be acceptable without blinkfeed, but then again HTCs quality will never be acceptable, at least Samsung has great quality and service.
Stranger from a far coast

The above article is why people look at specs and the extra hardware capabilities (external sd + removable batt)

We should all be proud of this figure. Only sheeps are remaining at apple which does not have the above said features.
Abdullah

Samsung haters… Where aree yoooouuuu ???
- amine ELouakil
  
  I guess their 900% bigger marketing budget than any other Android OEM is paying off, good for them
tomn1ce

HTC puts out nice phones but for some reason they find a way to cripple the device. Look at the DNA on vzw the only option is a 16GB with no room for expansion and a tiny battery.

Motorola would only release a high end phone on vzw. If they would release high end phone on all the carriers they would be doing a lot better. Hopefully Google will turn Motorola around and make it a contender. They need to make high end phones for the top 4 carriers and advertise them as they advertised the OG Droid. This time around they should show people what the phone is capable of doing, instead of blowing up walls and fighting cyborgs like in their last series of droid razr commercials. I walk into tmobile stores and I don’t see one Motorola device.

I’m not sure why LG is not impacting the market a bit more. They have put out nice high end device in the past year. At the same time they have cripple their lower end models by not including enough internal memory and RAM. While Samsung make a low end device with 8/16GB of internal storage and 1GB RAM. LG put in their lower end device 4/8GB of internal storage and 512/768MB. It also seems that they are not advertising as much as they need to. I won’t point out their lack of OS updates that I keep hearing about here and there to their device because the mainstream consumers are not into updates and/or don’t know that the OS is updated from time to time or just don’t care about the latest version of the OS as we do.
http://www.facebook.com/Dan.Lingman Dan Lingman

How does one go from “samsung and apple got 90% of smartphone profits in Q1 2012″ – the actual title of the linked article, to “Samsung accounted for 90 percent of all smartphone profits” – the text in the article above. This is just bad journalism.